Search Group Policies
One of the things system administrators do quite often is create, tweak and troubleshoot active directory group policies. As you know, some of these group policies can become quite large and can contain hundreds of settings. Finding exactly what you are looking for can become a bit overwhelming and time consuming. But it doesn’t have to be! This post describes a couple of tips that will help you search group policies and find exactly what you are looking for in seconds!
Tip #1 – Searching Group Policies
On the left side of the group policy editor, select the group policy you want to search. Then click “show all” to expand all the policy settings.
Now press CTL+ F on your keyboard. You will be prompted with a Find box. Type in the text of what you are searching for. In the example below, we are searching for the word “encryption”. This works the same way as searching for text in your browser. Continue to select Next or Previous until you find the setting you are looking for.
Tip #2 – Filter Administrative Templates
Tip #1 is most likely all you need. However, if you want to search for specific settings under the Administrative Templates section, then please feel free to continue reading.
Open group policy editor and edit the policy in question. Expand Administrative Templates. Notice how many different policies there are. In the example below, we just want to search for any setting that contains the word “ActiveX”. In order to search the administrative template, right-click on Administrative Templates and select Filter Options.
Now enable the Keyword Filters and type in the text that you want to search for.
Notice how the list of policies has shrunk. You can now easily expand them one by one and quickly find all settings that include your keyword. Don’t forget to undo the filter after you are done.
That’s it! Plain and simple. Using these two methods to search for group policies should allow you to quickly find what you are looking for. If you found this helpful, leave a comment. If not, that’s OK. Leave a comment anyway! Good luck and happy group policy searching.
